Introduction

Since January 2002, the United States has been imprisoning men virtually incommunicado at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba without access to any fair and adequate legal process. To date, the U.S. government has not permitted a public accounting of the prisoners’ protests of their indefinite detention without legal process and their inhumane treatment. Rather, the Department of Defense (DOD) has consistently denied and minimized the prisoners’ repeated protests. For over two years, the DOD has maintained exclusive control over the information released from Guantánamo, prohibiting unhindered independent and public consideration of the prisoners’ plight. Yet over the past year, internal government memoranda released in Freedom of Information Act litigation, client interviews by pro bono habeas counsel, and court records have revealed that since 2002, the prisoners at Guantánamo have been engaged in substantial, and at times life-threatening, hunger strikes and other acts of protest in response to their detention without trial and their inhumane treatment.

Since the 2002 hunger strikes, the Guantánamo prisoners have been seeking fair trials, freedom from religious abuses, an end to physical and psychological abuses, adequate shelter and food, and access to clean water. As years have passed, the U.S. government has not permitted a single fair hearing for any prisoner, even after the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in the Center for Constitutional Rights’ case, Rasul v. Bush in June 2004, affirming the prisoners’ right to challenge in federal court the lawfulness of their detention and conditions of confinement. In response to the U.S. military’s ongoing defiance of the rule of law, the prisoners’ protests have become more serious, with the current series of hunger strikes resulting in an unknown number of detainees slipping into comas.

This report chronicles the history of prisoner protests at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station from February 2002 to August 2005 based upon the information known to date. An important aspect of this history is the U.S. military’s efforts to conceal the scope and significance of the widespread prisoner protests. Our country cannot afford to detain prisoners beyond the rule of law and without judicial oversight. Prisoners are now prepared to die in an effort to receive a fair hearing and humane treatment.The time is long overdue for the prisoners in Guantánamo to receive a fair hearing in federal court as mandated by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Rasul v.Bush. Barbara Olshansky and Gitanjali Gutierrez September 8, 2005...

The Guantánamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes & Protests: A Special Report By the Center for Constitutional Rights